Blurrt

Iraq: Special Forces v Drone Strikes?

June 19, 2014 — by

Events are moving swiftly as a result of the oil refinery in Baiji, just 34 miles north of Baghdad, being seized by ISIS. The refinery supplies Baghdad which could lead to fuel shortages in the capital risking further destabilization.

Obama is still assessing the situation but says any Iraq plan to increase security in the region won’t require a congressional vote. Obama consulted Congressional leaders yesterday and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that the president didn’t think his current plans for Iraq would require authorization from lawmakers. Possible options for Obama are drone strikes and/or sending in Special Forces.

Using Blurrt, a Twitter sentiment analysis tool, we have searched for the words Obama + Iraq between 0800 EDT and 2000 EDT (12 hours) on Wednesday 18th June. We can see how people generally feel about Obama’s handling of the crisis in Iraq. There were 18.55k tweets over the 12 hours and 8.24k were RT’s, with 9% showing a positive sentiment expressed, 35% negative and 56% neutral. Despite a peak in volume around 1pm EDT, the average sentiment remained between -2 and -3 (on a range of -5 for very negative to +5 for very positive). (*the times on the graphs are British Summer Time).

Obama:Iraq sentiment 2014-06-19 11.24.18

So how do people feel about using Special Forces or drone strikes as a next move? The next table represents the data collected from Twitter in the 12 hours stated with keywords ‘Obama + Special Forces’, and the table below for ‘Obama + drone’. Clearly there is much more negative sentiment expressed within the tweets mentioning drone [attacks].

Special Forces:

special forces 2014-06-19 11.33.01           

Drone Attacks:    

Obama:Drone

As Obama weighs the options, are there any other insights that can be collected from Twitter that might help the hectored president? Well, Michelle Obama scores most highly for Twitter sentiment peaking on Saturday 7th June as a result of her tribute speech for Dr. May Angelou. But he probably already knew that.

Here’s further background reading into the situation on the ground in Iraq, as posted yesterday via Kristina Wong @TheHill